Friday, September 11, 2009

Mistakes

In repeating stories about ISU-SUI from George Wine, he includes several mistakes:

By the mid-1970s, however, political pressure grew and a four-year series of football games was contracted with Iowa State.

That's putting it mildly. When the Legislature is threatening the Regents, you have serious pressure at hand.

The first four games were played at Kinnick Stadium, but when Iowa State built a new stadium in the early ‘80s the series has been home-and-home.

The stadium now known as Jack Trice opened in 1974, three years before the series was renewed. Implying that ISU didn't have decent facilities is nice spin, but wrong again.

Then Ron writes:

We know Donnie Duncan, a former Iowa State coach, placed so much emphasis on the game against Iowa that his teams collapsed at midseason, and we know Ferentz has had trouble winning in Ames.

This is a convenient distortion. I've talked to a few players from the Duncan era, and the annual collapse resulted from a lack of off-season conditioning and bad team chemistry caused by coaches playing favorites- stars didn't have to practice or work out, scrubs did. The results showed up each November. The fact the ISU game was played in September helped cement the falsehood.

Watching UNI come within a point of Iowa sure beats watching the Hawkeyes have their way with the Ball States and Maines of the world.

Translation: We have to play home games against teams we don't care about. Since we didn't show up and still won, it was fun.